Saturday, January 31, 2015

NEW FRENCH LAW SETS PRECEDENT

To Everyone,

Today the French Parliament passed a law addressing electromagneticfields and electromagnetic hypersensitivity. While the new law does notgo nearly far enough, it is the first of its kind in the world. Amongits provisions are the following:

1. Anyone who intends to build one or more radio installations regulatedby the ANFR (France's equivalent of the FCC) must submit to the localgovernment, if requested by the mayor, calculations of electromagneticfields that will be generated. This information must be made availableto the public.

2. A national dialogue committee on levels of public exposure toelectromagnetic fields is created within the ANFR. This committee willgive information to all stakeholders. The ANFR will give annual reportsto the dialogue committee on the results of all electromagnetic fieldmeasurements in France as well as measures taken to reduce exposurelevels at "atypical" locations where the levels are greater than usual.The ANFR will compile a annual census of atypical exposure locations andperiodically report on measures taken to reduce exposure at suchlocations.

3. Within one year from today, the ANFR will produce a municipal-levelmap of all cell towers in France.

4. Any advertisement for cell phones must mention, clearly and legibly,the recommended use of an accessory device that reduces exposure of thehead to radio frequency radiation. Violators are subject to a fine of75,000 euros.

5. Advertisements promoting the use of cell phones without suchaccessories are prohibited. Violators are subject to a fine of 75,000euros.

6. Anyone selling a cell phone must provide, upon request, an accessorydesigned for children under 14 years of age that reduces exposure of thehead to radio frequency radiation.

7. Wireless internet is prohibited in places dedicated to the welcome,rest, and activities of children under 3 years of age.

8. Wireless access for internet in elementary schools must be disabledwhen not in use for teaching.

9. One year from today, the government shall submit to the Parliament areport on electromagnetic hypersensitivity.

A Law to Regulate Exposure to Electromagnetic Fields

Pierre Le Hir, Le Monde, Jan 29, 2015 (Google Translation)

Two years in the works, the law governing public exposure to electromagnetic fields generated by wireless technology (base stations, mobile phones, tablets ...) was adopted by the Members of the National Assembly [MNAs], Thursday, January 29 in late morning, when time was set aside in favor of the Greens. It was voted by the whole majority, while the UDI Party abstained - except Bertrand Pancher (Meuse) who voted in favor - and the UMP voted against it, seeing it as an barrier to the development of digital industries.

This law - the first inFrancetoestablisha precautionary approach addressing the potential health risks of radio frequencies - is the result of a real obstacle course, during whichitsinitial ambitions were seriously downgraded.The Bill, filed in January 2013 by the MNA for Val-de-Marne Laurence Abeille (EuropeEcologie-Greens) had been referred to committee by the Socialists, beforereturningto the National Assembly in January 2014, under a watered-down form, and then tobeadopted in first reading by the Senate in June 2014, in an even planed release.

Despite these successive setbacks, the environmental group decided tosubmit the Bill to a vote as is to prevent his return to the Senate where it would have suffered new delays and probably additional knife strokes. Its adoption is thus final and welcomes Mrs Abeille, "the application decrees will be able to be taken without further delay " .

The major novelty is the introduction into French law of a principle of "sobriety" of public exposure to electromagnetic fields. So virtuous as it is, this principle, however, remains vague and non-binding. It is thus no longer question of lowering the exposure limits in force, which depending on the frequencies involved, are between 41 and 61 volts per meter (V / m), while the original Bill was aimed to scale them back to"as low as reasonably possible" or 0.6 V / m.

HOT SPOTS

The National Frequency Agency (AFNR) will neverthelessmakeevery year a national census of"atypical points" or"places where the level of public exposure substantially exceeds that generally observed at the national scale".Operators will have toremedy them within six months,"subject to technical feasibility".

The average exposure in France is now about 1 V / m, but a study of the Operations Committee on mobile waves (Copic), covering sixteen municipal representative of the French territory and published in 2013, reported some exposure peaks "up to 10 V / m at maximum transmitter power" , even if the levels remained below 0.7 V / m in 90% of cases. The AFNR considers up to now as atypical places where exposure exceeds 6 V / m.

In matters of transparency, the installation of antennas will now be subject to prior notice to mayors and presidents of intercommunicipal bodies. And these may in turn - but are not required - to organize a consultation with residents. In addition, a campaign of "awareness and information on the responsible and rational use of mobile devices" will be conducted.

WI-FI PROHIBITED IN CRIBS

A section of the Act is devoted to the protection of babies. Wireless devices will be banned in "the spaces dedicated to the care, resting and activities of children under 3 years" , that is to say, nurseries and daycare centers. However, contrary to the initial desire of environmentalists, Wi-Fi will remain permitted in primary schools. It will however have to be disabled outside "digital educational activities".

Finally, the often-dramatic situation of people suffering from electrohypersenitivity receives a first consideration. The government will have to submit a report to Parliament on this issue within a year.

« Anti-wave » associations also prefer toconsider the glass half full rather than half empty."This act, which is the first dedicated to the issue of electromagnetic waves and their impact on the environment and health, marks a first step in the legal recognition of the need to regulate the development of mobile phone communications and all wireless applications, "saysthe association for the regulation of mobile phone base stations (Priartem).In its view,"this first legislative effort must be an encouragement to go further in protecting people ".

CALLS FOR CAUTION

This act arrives in a context of accelerated development of sources of electromagnetic fields, in particular with the deployment of very high-speed 4G mobile communications. Aa of January 1st 2015, ANFR indicates the number of 4G base station sites authorized in France was, for all operators, 18,699 - compared to 12,525 a year earlier - and 15,424 are in service.

If there is no scientific consensus around the potential health risks from radiofrequencies, many studies and opinions have called for caution. In 2011, the World Health Organization (WHO) classified them as "possibly carcinogenic" . And in 2013, the National Agency Health Safety of Food, Environment and Labour (ANSES) recommended to "limit exposure of the population to radiofrequencies - especially from mobile phones - especially for children and heavy users " . It also called for "controling the overall exposure from base stations".

We are number 5 on their unranked list, along with the NRA, Electronic Frontier Foundation, and the states of New York, Virginia and Nevada!

Robert D. Atkinson, President of ITIF

The ITIF, which promotes “smart ideas for the innovation economy,”claims that smart meters are a big improvement, and they bemoan the fact that:

“Efforts to derail smart meter expansion…(have) been led by “Stop Smart Meters” (SSM), an organization committed to “advocacy, media outreach, and direct action network providing activism consultation and advice to dozens of local groups sprouting up who are fighting the wireless ‘smart’ meter assault” and to “defend your (old) analog meter.”

Why would we embrace a term like “Luddite” that is likely intended to ridicule and insult? In common usage, calling someone a “Luddite” has been used to imply irrational aversion to new technology, a kind of primitivism. But who were the original Luddites and what were they really fighting against?

Who were the Luddites?

We did a little research and it turns out that the original ”machine wreckers” who were most active in 1811-1812 in England, termed Luddites after their mythical leader King Ned Ludd, were not opposed to new technology because they were afraid of it—that is a stale industry narrative two centuries old.

From review of historical documents, a more accurate picture emerges. The Luddite rebellion appears to have been primarily a response to harm brought to communities through the undemocratic and destructive way in which new technology was deployed.

“The Luddites…didn’t shun machines or technology out of hand. Instead, they ‘[favored] a thoughtful use of appropriate technologies that [did] not damage the relationships we hold dear,’ especially those with the natural world.”

The fact that rich and powerful corporate interests were forcing new technologies that drastically altered the lives of whole communities—damaging relationships held dearwithout even consulting people—this was as repugnant to people back then as it is today.

“When we speak about the destruction of “community” we must remember that this entailed complex kin patterns, forms of mutuality, and customs held in common. There is a material basis to community; together they constitute a commons.”

That community, or “commons,” was threatened (as it still is today) by private corporate interests. The Luddite movement of the early 19th century rose in response to a particularly brutal period during which the upper classes privatized (enclosed) previously common lands for their own benefit. These actions are known as the enclosures.

Linebaugh discusses the period leading up to the Luddite rebellions:

“The world was being enclosed, life was being closed off, people shut in. In 1795 before he was silenced by government the English Jacobin, John Thelwall, referred to “the inclosing system” which he defined as “that system of enclosure by which the rich monopolize to themselves the estates, rights, and possessions of the poor.”

The picturesque landscape of Britain is a result of enclosures of previously common land

Is it possible, as author Mike Davis asserts, that the Luddites were not“rebels against the future” as critics portray them, “but among the avant-garde of a planetary resistance movement against capitalist enclosures in the long struggle for a different future”?

Luddites were active in cities like Leeds, Manchester, and Sheffield, eventually taking sledgehammers to the weaving frames, which to them were symbols—and actual means—of oppression. Many were hanged and imprisoned for these deeds.

In taking direct action and smashing machines, the Luddites were not vandals—they were simply using the only means available to them to defend an artisan tradition, a community based lifestyle where textiles were produced in small workshops by independent, skilled workers.

Contrast the lives the Luddites were defending with the lives of workers after the arrival of factories and machines. According to Adam Smith in the Wealth of Nations:

“The man whose whole life is spent in performing a few simple operations.. generally becomes as stupid and ignorant as it is possible for a human creature to become.”

A dozen families removed smart meters from their homes in Dec. 2011 in Santa Cruz County, CA, leading to a statewide opt out (extortion) policy to require payment for keeping safe analogs.

For these reasons and others, the Luddite rebellion gained such a degree of popular support in England that “Lord Byron defending the Luddites, asked the legislators: ‘Can you commit a whole country to their own prisons?’”

By the same token, we would ask,“Can a utility disconnect an entire community for refusing smart meters—or opt out fees?”

The Truth About “Smart Grid”

The 21st century “smart grid,” characterized by monopoly coercion, increasing utility rates, tax diversion, damage to health and the environment, violations of privacy, structure fires and explosions, seizure and destruction of valuable public infrastructure, and (of course) deception about it all, has a great deal in common with these past abuses. And yet again, rich utility shareholders are reaping the benefits while the people pay a heavy price.

Of course we at Stop Smart Meters! don’t need an excuse to discuss the topic of smart meters and appropriate technology, but we are certainly grateful that ITIF has provided us with one. However, it would appear that an inaccurate portrayal of the Luddites is not the only thing that ITIF got wrong. For example, in their report they make a few questionable statements:

“Surprisingly, (Stop Smart Meters!) do not appear to oppose WiFi routers, despite the fact that they also give off radio-frequency energy. Perhaps they see WiFi as just too convenient and useful to oppose.”

If ITIF had spent any time reviewing our site and outreach materials, they would know that we discourage the use of any wireless technology when safer, wired alternatives exist. This is a thinly veiled attempt—a very common industry tactic—to paint their critics as hypocrites. They claim:

“According to the U.S. National Cancer Institute, there is no scientific evidence that radio-frequency can cause cancer.”

“To be sure, these technologies do gather personal information on the usage of utilities (as do analog meters)…”

Analog meters report the total amount of electricity consumed during a month, while smart meters report granular data that has been demonstrated to reveal intimate details of life within a home.

“And by automating meter reader jobs, (the smart grid) boosts overall national productivity and living standards.”

Since when does abolishing thousands of good jobs with benefits that are essential to ensuring the safety of electric and gas networks boost “overall productivity and living standards”?

Living standards for whom? Productivity toward what end?

A Question of Appropriate Technology

Stop Smart Meters! and our thousands of supporters around the world are not opposed to new technologies.

What we are opposed to is dangerous, invasive technology being forced on communities and made ubiquitous without an independent review or even public consent.

Call us Luddites if you will (and please do!)…but in the United States in 2015, the utilities and the state Public Utilities Commissions who “regulate” them do not inspire us with confidence in their ability to vet new technology such as the smart grid. They just don’t.

Former CPUC President and Electric Co. Executive Michael Peevey, now likely looking at felony charges for corruption for his close ties with PG&E over San Bruno and “smart meters”

According to the San Diego Union Tribune, felony corruption charges against Peevey related to the San Bruno explosion case are now likely. Last night, a whole slew of e-mails were released under court order that show backroom dealings and “stories” being manufactured by PUC executives to justify high smart meter “opt out” extortion fees.

Clearly there are benefits to many technologies. But history shows clearly enough the harm as well, with the public being reassured at various times over the past 100 years that nuclear fallout, asbestos, DDT, x-rays, thalidomide, and now cell phones and smart meters are all perfectly safe. The dead bodies and deteriorated communities that litter history are the result of arrogant corporate yes men & women who take their political and spiritual guidance from paychecks rather than independent scientific inquiry, their conscience, and their community at large.

The Sierra Nevada in California, baking in January heat

The Unanticipated Effects of Technology

The machines and worldview the Luddites fought against in the early 19th century have turned out to contain grim consequences for our long term safety and security on this planet. 2014 was the warmest on record. We have been battling mosquitoes and trudging through mud in the Sierra Nevada Mountains in January, sunbathing with not a flake of snow in sight, likely because of coal-powered technologies invented more than 200 years ago that spread around the world. While Earth’s climate is being destabilized by a fossil fuel habit that our system can’t seem to kick, “smart meters” are now consuming a ton more energy—much of it from coal—exacerbating the very problem that industry claims the billions of our taxes were meant to address. Is it a surprise that more and more people are questioning (the blind use of) technology?

On a personal level, I find it quite ironic and amusing that I am publicly being labeled a Luddite. I grew up in the heart of Silicon Valley using Apple computers from age 4. My dad loved technology and taught me all the latest games and software. I had an electronic organizer—really a precursor to a smart phone—when I was 12. It was called the Wizard and I loved it. I kept it with me always. Likewise my cell phone that I used until early 2010 when I began to realize the health effects.

That doesn’t mean that everything must become digital as proponents of the “Internet of Things” proclaim. There are some things in life where digital will never compete with the quality and authenticity of analog—and more people are realizing it.

LP’s are re-gaining market share as analog makes a comeback.

A safe, secured analog meter- behind bars

We love our LP player and would never trade it in for an iPod. There is a place for both. Our analog landline telephone has the quality and reliability (and freedom from the stupid grid) that digital VOIP and wireless simply cannot attain. Analog electric meters are built to last from metal and glass and reliable as hell. Same cannot be said for industry’s new offering, made of plastic so your private data can be transmitted through, but which unfortunately has the slightly inconvenient problem of melting and combusting when it gets hot.

ITIF and its Discontents

There are a couple of interesting things about reading through the ITIF’s awards nominations. First, the sense of isolation and frustration with a growing movement of people who are increasingly skeptical of false technological solutions (for very good reason!). Second is the acknowledgement that the same mindset of blindly forcing hazardous and ill thought out technology has infected food production, firearms, health care, publishing, transportation, tourism, and communications. Reasonable precautionary responses to such changes are slapped with the Luddite label, in order to marginalize them. That’s what organizations like the ITIF are for…

To try to marginalize us so they can continue to force their technocratic agenda.

We’re the opposite. We stand for values like community, privacy, safety and choice. We stand for appropriate technology that benefits people and communities.

It’s not just smart meters we want to stop—it’s an entire worldview that says “we know better than you, and you will live the way we want you to—in a way that maximizes productivity—whether you like it or not.”

ITIF—and the interests they represent—argue that we should all just trust the corporate/ government complex to introduce new technologies that impact our lives without any public oversight or independent review—or really any discussion at all. After all, what would the public add to the discussion, on account of us being ignorant and all?

That literally is their attitude.

They want to separate the business of technological “advancement” from political debate—to be able to decide for us—even what goes on and in our homes. If we raise our voices in protest, as so many of us have done, we are called names and ridiculed.

Luddites. Tin foil hat lunatics, conspiracy theorists.

We here at Stop Smart Meters! have seen too many people injured by inappropriate and untested smart grid technology to be fooled by smart meter industry name-calling, propaganda and lies. Too many homes burned down, surveilled, radiated. The problems have grown so obvious and the public is becoming more aware every day that the system is either ignorant and uninformed or terribly ill, corrupt and psychotic.

Episode 123: Snowflake

Well before the early 1500s, when Sir Thomas More first coined the term “Utopia,” people have been thinking about how to design their ideal community. Maybe it’s one that doesn’t use money, or one that drops traditional family structures and raises children collectively.

For a community of people on the outskirts of the small Arizona town of Snowflake, “utopia” is just a place where they won’t be physically sick. That’s because everyone in this community is suffering from Multiple Chemical Sensitivity or MCS.

Credit: Delaney Hall

People with MCS suffer from migraines, muscle pain, rashes, nausea, fatigue, and other debilitating symptoms they believe to be caused by low-level exposure to chemicals such as laundry detergent, perfume, and car exhaust.

Most scientific studies have not shown a strong connection between chemical exposure and symptoms, and the American Medical Association does not recognize the illness as an organic, chemical-caused disease. But doctors still disagree about what exactly causes it — whether symptoms are physiological, psychological, or both. There is a subset of doctors who believe in MCS and treat it, but most mainstream physicians avoid the diagnosis and may recommend therapy to treat the symptoms. A lot of people with the illness take matters into their own hands, designing their diets, habits, and environments make themselves feel better.

The people in this Arizona community might be the closest thing there is to an “MCS think tank” and they’ve developed building techniques to help manage their sensitivities. That means using “safe” materials like ceramic tiles or concrete floors rather than carpeting, which traps chemical odors. Many leave their windows wide open, even in the winter, to keep air flowing through their houses. Some people with MCS also experience sensitivity to electricity, so some houses forgo electricity, or have it routed through a single room which can be completely shut off from the rest of the house.

Credit: Delaney Hall

There are about three dozen households in the Snowflake community, but the waiting list is long. Susan Molloy, who keeps track of the housing, gets calls every week from “runners,” who are moving from place to place, looking for somewhere that won’t aggravate their sensitivities.

Snowflake isn’t the only community of its kind, but it’s one of the largest and most established. Some local businesses in the larger town of Snowflake have even begun to adapt to the MCS community, at least a little bit. Sierra Dental has tailored their practice to make it friendly to their MCS patients. There’s a real estate agent who helps people find MCS-friendly properties. There’s also an organic food store where the owner will shop for people with MCS and leave the groceries outside for them to pick up, so they don’t have to come into the store, which smells like incense.

This MCS utopia is a complicated place. Some doctors would argue it isolates people, pushing them deeper into their illness. But Susan Molloy claims that Snowflake is a necessary refuge, and she guards the place fiercely. “All it takes is one family building a gas station out there on the road, and a lot of us would have to move.”

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About Me

While I have always been extremely health conscious and am presently in excellent health, I did become temporarily out-of-commission (i.e. I was really sick) in 2005 with a number of at the time unexplainable symptoms. I was quite puzzled at the time because I had been eating mainly organically grown food, drinking spring water, doing Yoga every morning, and going to the gym several times a week. In other words, I was doing everything one is supposed to do to stay healthy. I was not supposed to get sick. It took me six months before discovering or even imagining the main source of the problem - which was in fact "overexposure to electromagnetic" - especially microwave - radiation. I was living within 200 meters of two cell phone towers at the time and within 500 meters of a 3rd one with numerous WiFi signals bleeding into my apartment from adjacent neighbors. I developed a host of symptoms, which are found in what has been misleadingly described as Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS) -- but much more accurately described as Radio Wave or Microwave Sickness. Large numbers of people in the USA suddenly started getting sick in 1984...